This invention relates to a telephone switching system and particularly to providing to a customer a promotional message from the telephone switching system during a silent interval between ringing signals or after a subscriber alerting signal tone.
Call Waiting (CW) and Caller Identification (CID) are well known concepts in the telephone and cellular industry. With CW, a telephone or cellular user who is speaking with a second party on the telephone receives a subscriber access signal (SAS) tone, which is similar to a conventional CW tone, from the telephone company central office of the user when the user has another incoming call from a third party. The SAS tone is audible in the user""s telephone or cellular receiver. After hearing the SAS tone, the user has the choice of ignoring the incoming call or answering the incoming call by pressing a preselected button (or the hookswitch) of the telephone. If the user answers the incoming call, the second party is placed on xe2x80x9choldxe2x80x9d. Although the user is informed when the third party is calling, the user does not receive the CID information which typically includes the name and telephone number of the third party.
With CID, the telephone company transmits encoded information to the user""s telephone (or the user""s adjunct device connected to the telephone) between the first and second ring signals from the telephone company. This encoded information (CID information) includes the name and telephone number of the calling party. The user""s customer premises equipment (CPE) connects to the user""s telephone line and detects, decodes, displays and stores the encoded information. For the CPE to properly process the CID information, the telephonee must be in an on-hook condition when the CID information is received. As used herein, the term xe2x80x9con-hookxe2x80x9d refers to the condition which generally exists when the handset of the telephone is resting on the hookswitch of the telephone and the term xe2x80x9coff-hookxe2x80x9d refers to the condition which generally exists when the handset of the telephone is removed from the hookswitch of the telephone.
The two concepts of CID and CW have also been combined to create CID with CW (CIDCW). CIDCW requires that the telephone or cellular user have a CPE (or the equivalent) connected to the telephone line. When the user is speaking on the phone with a second party and receives a call from a third party, a SAS tone followed by a CPE alerting signal (CAS) tone is transmitted from the telephone company central office of the user to the user""s CPE. The CAS tone is similar to a dual tone multi-frequency (DTMF) signal, but has higher frequencies and is of a lower amplitude. The CPE detects the CAS tone and then transmits an acknowledge signal to the telephone company central office. The acknowledge signal has been defined to be the DTMF signal xe2x80x9cDxe2x80x9d. During the transmission of the acknowledge signal, the CPE mutes its own handset for a predetermined interval of time and the telephone company central office mutes the acknowledge signal so that the second party does not hear the acknowledge signal. Upon detecting the acknowledge signal, the telephone company central office transmits the CID information of the third party to the user""s CPE. The CPE receives and displays to the user the third party""s CID information and communication is re-established with the second party.
In both CID and CIDCW systems, the calling party may be allowed to invoke a xe2x80x9cprivacyxe2x80x9d option to prevent delivery of the calling party""s CID information (i.e. name and telephone number) to the user""s CPE. In this case, the originating telephone company central office of the calling party transmits the CID information relating to the calling party to the terminating telephone company central office of the user (as is done for calls where the privacy capability is not invoked) so that the calling party""s CID information is available for other network services (i.e. automatic callback/automatic recall) that might use it. However, the calling party""s CID information is marked xe2x80x9cprivatexe2x80x9d so the terminating central office recognizes that it should not be transmitted to the user""s CPE. The terminating central office responds to the CID information marked as xe2x80x9cprivatexe2x80x9d from the originating central office by sending a xe2x80x9cprivacy indicator codexe2x80x9d to the user""s CPE. The CPE responds to the xe2x80x9cprivacy indicator codexe2x80x9d by displaying to the user the term xe2x80x9cprivate callerxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9canonymous callerxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cunavailablexe2x80x9d so the user can determine that the calling party has invoked the privacy capability.
It would therefore be desirable to have a system and method which would provide to the CID or CIDCW customer a promotional message (i.e. a company""s name, product, slogan or website, etc.) instead of the conventional privacy message (i.e. private caller, anonymous caller or unavailable, etc.) when the calling party has invoked the privacy option to prevent the delivery of his/her CID information to the CID or CIDCW customer CPE.
Accordingly, a technical advance is achieved by method and apparatus for providing to a Caller Identification (hereinafter sometimes referred to as xe2x80x9cCIDxe2x80x9d) customer a promotional message during a silent interval between ringing signals from a local stored program-controlled switching office (hereinafter sometimes referred to as xe2x80x9cLSOxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cLocal Switching Officexe2x80x9d) when a calling party has invoked a privacy option to prevent the delivery of his/her directory telephone number with or without a corresponding name (hereinafter sometimes referred to as xe2x80x9cCID informationxe2x80x9d) to customer premises equipment (hereinafter sometimes referred to as xe2x80x9cCPExe2x80x9d) of the CID customer.
In the present invention, after CID information of the calling party is received to the LSO of the CID customer marked as xe2x80x9cprivatexe2x80x9d from an originating stored program-controlled switching office (hereinafter sometimes referred to as xe2x80x9cOSOxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9coriginating switching officexe2x80x9d) of the calling party indicating that the CID information should not be transmitted to the CPE of the CID customer, the LSO sends intermittent ringing signals to the CID customer. Alternately, and depending on the LSO, the LSO may want to send a privacy indicator code following a first ringing signal so that conventional CID display devices can still be used along with the CPE of the present invention without either affecting the other. In continuance of the present invention, following a first one of the ringing signals to the CID customer, the LSO selects, sequentially, by any known technique a promotional message from a variety of promotional messages stored in an associate data base (or memory) and transmits the selected promotional message from the associate data base (or memory) to the CPE of the CID customer during a silent interval between the ringing signals, preferably between the first and second ringing signals. This stored program-controlled switching system (SPCS) to CPE transmission does not require any special customer loop; it occurs over the tip and ring leads of the CID customer loop. The CPE of the CID customer receives and displays to the CID customer the promotional message from the LSO during the silent interval between the ringing signals. The promotional message is thus displayed during the silent interval and remains displayed after the silent interval. The displayed message can state, for example, xe2x80x9cWatch NBC Sportsxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cHave a Pepsi Todayxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cShop Ralphsxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cKentucky Does Chicken Rightxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cGot Milkxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cNFL on Fox TVxe2x80x9d, etc. The CPE of the CID customer subsequently stores the received promotional message in an associate memory for later recall from the associate memory and display to the CID customer.
Another technical advance is achieved by method and apparatus for providing to a Caller Identification with Call Waiting (hereinafter sometimes referred to as xe2x80x9cCIDCWxe2x80x9d) customer already engaged in a telephone conversation with a far-end caller via a LSO a promotional message during a silent interval after a subscriber alerting signal (hereinafter sometimes referred to as xe2x80x9cSASxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cCASxe2x80x9d tone from the LSO when a call waiting caller has invoked a privacy option to prevent the delivery of his/her CID information to a CPE of the CIDCW customer.
In the present invention, after CID information of the call waiting caller is received to the LSO of the CIDCW customer marked as xe2x80x9cprivatexe2x80x9d from an OSO of the call waiting caller indicating that the CID information should not be transmitted to the CPE of the CIDCW customer, the LSO sends the SAS or CAS tone, similar to a conventional call waiting tone, to the CIDCW customer. The CPE of the CIDCW customer, upon detecting the tone from the LSO, mutes its own handset for a predetermined duration of time corresponding to at least the duration of the promotional message to be transmitted between the LSO and the CPE of the CIDCW customer. It will be realized that the time period discussed is arbitrary and may be predetermined to any value consistent with proper operation. After the LSO sends the tone to the CID customer, the LSO selects, sequentially, by any known technique a promotional message from a variety of promotional messages stored in an associate data base (or memory) and transmits the selected promotional message from the associate data base (or memory) to the CID of the CIDCW customer during the silent interval after the tone. The tone appearing on the CIDCW customer loop is a dual-tone signal and the promotional message is transmitted between the LSO and the CPE of the CIDCW customer using frequency shift keyed (hereinafter sometimes referred to as xe2x80x9cFSKxe2x80x9d) signaling. The CPE of the CIDCW customer receives and displays to the CIDCW customer the promotional message from the LSO during the silent interval after the tone. The promotional message is thus displayed during the silent interval and remains displayed after the silent interval and subsequently stored in an associate memory for later recall and display. The displayed promotional message can state, e.g. one of the examples above.
It is to be understood that the LSO may require that the CPE of the CIDCW customer, in addition to muting its own handset in response to the tone from the LSO, transmit an acknowledge signal to the LSO which, in turn, sequentially selects the promotional message from the associate data base (or memory) and transmits the selected promotional message from the associate data base (or memory) to the CPE of the CIDCW customer during the silent interval after the tone.